Chapter VIII

Vocabulary list (Present orally original situations of the novel, using the following words and phrases)

To trace one’s car, to shake smb. free, under false pretenses, to be from much the same strata as oneself, to be liable at the whim of smth., to commit oneself to smth., to do well, to move with the season, to be at hand, to take shape, a cheap sharper, on the last of one’s pay, to be pervaded with smth., to be not worth a decent stroke of work, to call up the church, to lap up, to leave word with smb., word is brought to smb., holocaust.

I. Give a summary of Chapter VIII in writing.

II. Be ready to discuss the following:

1. Describe the history of Gatsby’s love. Describe Daisy’s world and the impression it produced on Gatsby, a penniless”nobody” in the army. Was it a case of love at first sight on both sides? Why did Daisy marry Tom Buchanan? Describe Gatsby’s journey to Louisville. Comment on the following:

“In the figure of Gatsby, he (Fitzgerald) had been able to objectivize and poetize his early feelings about the rich: that they were a race apart with a better seat in life’s grandstand, that their existence was somehow more beautiful and intense than that of ordinary mortals. Barricaded behind their fortunes, they had seemed to him like royalty… One finds the same point of view in Yeats or Oscar Wilde. But also Fitzgerald sensed a corruption in the rich and mistrusted their might. “That was always my experience,” he wrote nearly at the end of his life,—“a poor boy in a rich boy’s school; a poor boy in a rich man’s club at Princeton…” He told a friend that “the whole idea of Gatsby is the unfairness of a poor young man not being able to marry a girl with money. This theme comes up again and again because I lived it.” (FromA. Turnbull. Scott Fitzgerald. N:Y, 1962, pp. 149-150).

2. Speak on Gatsby’s feelings upon losing Daisy. Comment on the following: “…perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream.” How are his feelings revealed through his manner of speech?

3. Speak about Nick Caraway’s attitude towards Gatsby as it is depicted in the chapter. Comment on the words addressed to Gatsby: “They’re a rotten crowd. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” Why did Nick break with Jordan?

4. Speak on George Wilson’s feelings and behaviour. Comment on Wilson’s taking Dr. Eckleburg for God.

What meaning does the author get into the phrase “and the holocaust was complete”?

5. Discuss the composition of the chapter. Into what parts does it fall? How do they follow in time?

What sources does Nick reconstruct Gatsby’s and Wilson’s actions from?

Point out the author’s digressions and comment on them. Speak on the role of the descriptive paragraphs of the chapter. What is the author’s purpose in introducing them? What does “as harp difference in the weather” suggest?

Chapter IX

Vocabulary list (Present orally original situations of the novel, using the following words and phrases)

A positive manner, to bring to light, to show a surprising amount of character, to be deranged a surmise, chance visitors, to break away, to be tied up in some business, to be completely knocked down and out, to rise up to one’s position, to draw a sight-seeing crowd, to hang up the receiver, to sneer at smth., to force one’s way, to be hard up, regular clothes, to raise smb. up out of nothing, to keep out, to the bitter end, to be broke up, distortion, to let alone, to sweep one’s refuse away, a wrong guest, to throw dust into smb.’s eyes, one’s share of suffering, at the end of the earth, an obscene word, to stand out clearly, capacity for wonder.